On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 08:06:20 +0100 Philip Ashmore contact@philipashmore.com wrote:
Sometimes the sound starts muted and I have to enable it with kmixer which tells me that I have two mixers, PulseAudio and "HDA Intel PCH".
Maybe that's because I end the session with earphones plugged in and start it with them unplugged, not sure.
"HDA Intel PCH" is the underlying ALSA mixer and PulseAudio is layered on overtop. ALSA is the real sound system--Pulse just offers some auxiliary services like easier Bluetooth association, and you may not need it at all if your sound system only involves local wired speakers and/or headphones. (Early versions of PulseAudio were also notoriously buggy, but hopefully you're not running a really old version.)
The automute could be coming from a conflict between the two layers, or from ALSA being unable to save settings on system shutdown for some reason.
E. Liddell